GLOBAL RESOURCES FOR A DIGITAL FUTURE

Going international for digital resources

The Covid crisis  has sharpened the challenge: Germany is missing thousands of skilled IT workforce. “Industrie 4.0” as the synonym for data based manufacturing business has changed  the way how R&D, HR departments of German corporations are tackling the bottleneck for future growth in order to maintain their position in the global industrial competition.

• As the recruitment of professionals hit national limits, though,  even the German “Mittelstand” began international recruiting. For its industrial development and sites worldwide  Germany’s champions in production “silently” started cooperation with international service providers and freelancers.
• To register subsidiaries only for the purpose of  recruiting and building capacities in countries where resources are available – this strategy is not anymore a privilege of large multinational corporations
• There are many arguments for international partnerships: The availability and scalability of resources, the proven quality and skills of international providers and freelancers and sometimes still definitely the cost advantages – in comparison to “migrate” and locate this valuable resources to Germany.
• An additional argument: For internationally active enterprises,  there is an increasing a political and legal obligation to internationalize data business in order to follow national data policies and to secure local agility.
• And finally the start-up ecosystems: The brightest minds in many countries did not just wait for job offers from Germany, but started own businesses which are relevant for the manufacturing sector – and they are serving international customers already. The smartest national, regional and sector clusters and agencies for economic promotion were already connecting their ecosystems proactively and successfully to international markets.